“Sometime after two,” Anne Marie told him.
“We’ll make it,” he assured them. “Plenty of time. How are you holding up?”
“I’ll be all right. I had hoped to nap partway, but I was too excited earlier, and at the moment this drive is a bit too unnerving and too steep for any such thing. I’m afraid to close my eyes.”
“Don’t blame me,” Solomon responded. “I’m not the one that came up with this place. All I can say is that there better be a nice view of a clear sky up there or I’m gonna be mightily pissed off. Uh—pardon the language.”
“Take no mind of me,” Anne Marie responded. “I’m feeling a bit, well, you know, myself.”
He started up again and, three switchbacks later, reached a level, debris-filled area that went back quite a ways. The headlights revealed it to be deserted.
The captain looked at the crumbling remains of buildings and gates and fences and frowned. “Did your porter tell you just what this place used to be for?” he asked.
“No,” Tony admitted. “It would have to be either something very secretive or something very mundane, such as a storage area for road-grading equipment—there are many rock slides through here, or there were in my day.”
The captain took the minivan on a very slow circuit and stopped when the headlights illuminated a large concrete pad. “A helipad. That’s what that is,” he told them. “Either this provided a quick getaway for VIPs or it was used to spirit people out of the city in secret. You could take somebody out from a rooftop in Rio, bring him here, then transfer him to just about anywhere. The buildings seem too small for a real jail but perfectly adequate for some quiet interrogation with no prying eyes around.”
“Oh, dear,” muttered Anne Marie.
Tony just nodded. “As military governments go, the one that ruled here for more than a decade wasn’t all that horrible, but particularly in the early days, they went after communists, labor union people, vocal opponents of the regime . . . It wasn’t as bad as Argentina or even Uruguay, but the military mind is rather consistent, and security is always the most zealous and secretive, particularly at the start of a military regime. It was because they were not totally fascist that the army is still held in some esteem here, and they were not overthrown—they finally admitted they hadn’t the slightest idea how to run a large country and essentially quit. Still, there was probably much sadness here, and now it has become a lover’s hideaway and a refuge for would-be stargazers. There is something very Brazilian in that.”
“Well, we’ve got a fairly clear view from here except in the direction of the city,” Solomon noted. “We still have a lot of light pollution but if there’s anything to see in this area, we should see it.”
“Try the radio,” Tony suggested. “There is most certainly some coverage of it somewhere.”
From the evidence of a slow turning of the dial, the “coverage” was mostly Brazilian music, the only obvious tie-in being a classical station playing The Planets. At the half hour, though, after the general world news headlines and local stories, the announcer said, “And finally, throughout the region, thousands of people are up in the hills or on rooftops or out at sea awaiting the arrival of what scientists say will be the most spectacular meteor display in centuries. If you are still up and listening to me, you should delay going to sleep another three-quarters of an hour and go outside and find a clear view to the northeast. Scientists tracking the meteor state that it should land somewhere in the remote upper Amazon basin, possibly near the Peruvian border, but it should be quite low over Rio when it arrives at approximately two-fifteen local time. Authorities state that the meteor will probably look much like a huge burning moon, but traveling very fast. Nothing is expected to strike Rio or anywhere within a thousand kilometers of the city, but as a precaution, police and fire teams are on the alert. Remain tuned to this station for updates.”
“I’m not at all sure I like that last business,” Anne Marie commented. “It sounds like they aren’t bloody well sure of anything.”
“Hundreds of meteors strike the Earth every single day,” the captain reminded her. “Most are very small, and most fall into the ocean, but getting hit by one is not exactly the sort of thing sane people worry about. This one is unusual because it’s so large, because it’s going to strike land, and most of all because it was spotted early, so we know it’s coming. But your odds of winning the Irish Sweepstakes three years in a row are far greater than the odds that even a splinter of this meteor will strike where you are. All that was, as he said, just precaution. You can never predict these things a hundred percent, and if it breaks up, pieces of it might fall in the region. Even then, it’ll just make a more spectacular show for us to see—but it’ll also mean even less damage to the world when the main body hits.”
“Is that true?” Anne Marie asked. “Can the thing really do damage to the world? I realize I shouldn’t like to be under it when it crashes, but—the world?”
“One of them killed the dinosaurs,” Solomon said. “The whole climate of the planet was changed because so much dust and debris was kicked up high enough that it gave us twilight for several years. The plants died, the swamps dried up, things grew too cold, and the giant creatures couldn’t eat or adapt to it.”
“But that is just a theory, is it not?” Tony put in.
The captain was silent for a moment, staring off into space. “Yes, just a theory,” he responded. “But the right one.”
Anne Marie stared at the strange little man in the darkness and frowned. “Indeed? And how can you know that?”
Because it was a pain in the ass, even with the greatest computers in creation, to figure out just the exact spot to aim it where it would do exactly that, he thought to himself. Aloud, in a lighter tone, he said, “Well, I told you I was older than I looked.”
They weren’t sure whether to laugh or edge away from him at that, but since he had the car and the keys, a nervous laugh seemed the most prudent choice.
The captain got a blanket out of the car and spread it on the ground, then went back and got out a small hamper and a cooler. He then helped Tony get Anne Marie’s wheelchair set up and her into it.
“Some light snacks, sinful sweets,” the captain told them. “And some good wine, although in case you couldn’t or wouldn’t drink, some fruit punch as well.”
The stars were out, not as many as would be visible farther out from the city but far more than could be seen in Rio itself. There was a quarter moon at this season, but it was a late moonrise and had not yet shown itself, nor would it until almost an hour after the meteor arrived. That much luck was with them.
The captain amazed them with his knowledge of the stars and constellations. There didn’t seem to be a single one he couldn’t name, or tell its distance from Earth and details about its composition.
“You know more than most astronomers could keep in their heads, I think,” Tony noted, unable to see the stars but nonetheless fascinated by the tour. “This is from navigating a ship?”
“From navigating a lot of ships, and of different types,” the captain responded.
“Do you think there is other life out there?” Anne Marie asked him. “Strange creatures, alien civilizations, all that sort of thing?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered confidently. “A vast number. The hugeness of the cosmos is beyond anyone’s comprehension. Some of them may already have spaceships and be in contact or even commerce with one another.”
“You mean in this solar system?” Tony responded. “I would doubt it.”
“No, no, there’s nothing else in our solar system worth mentioning. I mean beyond. Far beyond. Thousands and millions of light-years, in this galaxy and many others.”
“You are a romantic, Captain,” Tony said skeptically. “What you say about other creatures and civilizations might well be true, but those same distances would prohibit contact. The speed of light alone says no.”
“Well, that is something of a stopper,” Solomon admitted, “but not as much as you’d think. Gravity bends space, light, even time itself, and it’s but one of a great many forces at work. If a ship could be built to withstand those forces and make use of them, both space and time might be bent, reducing a journey of many centuries to a matter of days or weeks. They once said that heavier-than-air craft could never fly under their own power, and for many years it was believed that the sound barrier was so absolute, its vibrations would tear an airplane apart. Nothing is impossible—absolutely nothing. It just takes a lot of time, work, ingenuity, and guts to eventually figure a way to cheat.”
Tony shook his head. “My education was as an engineer, and I know about solving such things, but I believe that practical interstellar flight is just outside the rules of God.”
“Well said, sir! You sound like a medieval pope!”
“Oh, stop arguing, you two!” Anne Marie scolded. “I don’t care if it’s possible or not, since even if it is, none of us will live to see it, but it is fun to imagine. I wonder what sort of creatures there are out there.”
Captain Solomon looked at the stars. “Oz, and Olympus, and Fairyland, and a hundred other lands not quite imagined here on Earth. If you like, play a game. Suppose you could wish yourself up there, become one of those other creatures—what sort of creature might you like to be?”
She laughed. “I’m not much good at imagining creatures, and most of the ones on the telly are pretty slimy.”
“Well, there’ll be slimy ones, of course. But, if you can’t think of some creature out of whole cloth, pick one out of mythology or classical fantasy.”
“Umph! It’s so difficult to do! I suppose I should fall back on the obvious, as my therapists would say in the old days. Lying there, unable to move for so long, I used to dream of being a racehorse. Isn’t that a silly thought, even if an obvious fantasy for me? Anne Marie, interplanetary racehorse!”
“Well, be a centaur, then, or is that ‘centauress’?” the captain responded in a light mood. I knew another centauress once, but I can’t even remember her name . . .
“What about you, Tony?” Anne Marie prompted. “What sort of creature would you be? How about an eagle? Flying about, and with remarkable eyesight as well.”
“Possibly,” Tony responded, sounding a bit irritated with the game but nonetheless going along for Anne Marie’s sake since she was getting such a kick out of it. “But, and I am being fully honest here, if such a thing were possible, then I should like to be whatever you were.” And he meant it, too. The captain could feel the love that was there and was almost consumed with envy for this unfortunate blind and crippled pair of mortals.
“How sweet, my darling,” she said with a smile. “But what of you, Captain? We haven’t heard your own choice.”
“I’m afraid I have grave limits on that part of my imagination,” he answered seriously. “I can think of myself only as Gilgamesh, or the Wandering Jew. Always the same, never changing, walking through the world but unable to fully become a part of it.”
“I believe I’d like that,” Tony said. “Never changing, never aging, and never beyond repair, as it were. Watching the ages come and go, empires rise and fall, and great events as they occur. Yes, I might find that quite enticing.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” the captain came back a bit sharply. “Suppose you had to do it without Anne Marie? Without anybody to share it with? Watching everyone you knew or liked grow old and sick and then die, watching as many horrors as great things and being unable to do more than bear witness to them? Always alone, without even anyone to talk about it with or share experiences with on an equal basis? Is that a blessing or the worst of curses? You tell me.”
“Without Anne Marie? Hmmm . . . I think I see what you mean. But I would insist on Anne Marie as well!”
“I’m not so certain of that myself,” she put in. “I mean, after centuries together I’d expect even the most loving of people to get rather sick of one another.”
Both men were startled by her comment, Tony because he could not conceive of such a thing and the captain for far different reasons.
Was that ultimately what it was? Did I need her so much that I failed to realize that I could be a pretty boring and predictable stick-in-the-mud that might eventually drive anybody nuts? Could it be as simple as that?
“You might grow sick of me?” Tony asked her, genuinely a little upset.
“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll give you a few thousand years or so,” she answered playfully. She paused for a moment, sensing that her response had really bothered him. “Oh, come off it, Latin lover! It’s just a silly game to pass the time!”
The captain turned and looked back toward the northeast. “Sorry I caused any problems. As Anne Marie said, it’s just a ga— Holy smoke!”
Anne Marie suddenly looked up in the same direction and gasped. “Tony! The whole sky is lighting up! It’s like the sun’s about to rise!”
But it was thirteen minutes after two in the morning.
Rockfall: Rio
IN SPITE OF MANY PREDICTIONS TO THE CONTRARY, IT WAS quite clear to astronomers that as the meteor dug into the atmosphere, it was coming apart. Not enough to keep a large mass from striking fairly close to where they had predicted but enough so that pieces, some fairly large, would shower down along the route inland. This had been feared but was not completely unexpected.
It began while still well over the Atlantic, a brilliant, shining fireball that turned darkness into eerie twilight while providing a surprisingly multicolored display in its wake for those watching openmouthed on ships at sea and from monitoring aircraft. This caused a lot of attention but little concern; the ocean was vast and swallowed whole the splinters that managed to make it all the way to the surface.